


the myth of heaven

by omphale23



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-14
Updated: 2010-03-14
Packaged: 2017-10-08 00:18:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omphale23/pseuds/omphale23
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lewis Nixon has never used the term <i>projecting</i>, but he knows exactly what it means.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the myth of heaven

**Author's Note:**

> Luckily, I roped **sansets** and **gblvr** into beta duty for these.

Dick, who listened and watched and read much more in college than Nix ever pretended, doesn't like to draw attention to himself. He says only what he thinks is necessary, because Dick has decided that people should forget he's in the room whenever possible.

He draws the eye anyway, because the man couldn't be inconspicuous if his life depended on it, which it frequently does. The only reason he's still alive is that damn hair of his spends most days under a helmet. And that the effort is noble yet futile is reason enough for Nix to make an effort to crack Dick's calm exterior as often as possible, just to see if he can.

Early on, Nix notices that if he does something especially laudable--like showing up at a briefing with his shirt tucked and his hair combed, or going two days without a drink even though Dick's left his footlocker unlocked without knowing it, or telling his favorite story about the cow and the Welsh farmer without once using _fuck_ as an adjective--if he shows that he's making an effort to act like a civilized human being, sometimes Dick will humor a couple of requests. He'll do it with that smirk on his face, the one that says _I know what you're looking for, and I'm only giving it to you because deep down inside I'm a sarcastic, cynical bastard._ But he'll sigh and clear his throat and even though Nix never asks for anything specific, somehow the words that Dick recites are always the right ones.

Lewis Nixon has never used the term _projecting_, but he knows exactly what it means.

At first, he sticks to asking for the classics, for Shakespeare and Milton and Dante, because Dick's Italian is as bad as his German, and _The Inferno_ is always good for a laugh. He snickers, and Dick keeps going because a promise is a promise, and eventually Nix decides that the sound of the words is worth whatever it is he's given up, what things he's left behind. For months, he's content to just drowse in those poems wherever they end the day, with Dick's voice drifting through soliloquies and pentameter like he enjoys them, like they taste of summer and peace and places they haven't seen in lifetimes of days.

Nix sometimes answers in dirty limericks because they make Dick glare with annoyance and drop his boots loudly next to the door, if it's the sort of place where they can take off their boots. It usually isn't. Complacency is still a hobgoblin, after all, and these days he takes _puckish_ as the compliment he suspects it has always been.

Outside Bastogne, in the middle of the forest where it all changes and ends and begins, they move on to Whitman and Marvell and Lawrence. In December, there are nights that Nix doesn't entirely hate the universe for dropping him into a place that is hell frozen over. There are mornings when he blinks awake and Dick is still speaking, or speaking again, chanting _when I heard at the close of the day_, and for a moment he never wants to leave. There are echoing arcing stretches of seconds when he glances at Dick and thinks to himself, _there is that in me_, when he wants to open his mouth but Dick beats him to it, mutters, _my tongue is ineffectual on its pivots_, and for that Nix has no reply.

These moments are usually followed by explosions and screams, so he tries to pace himself, spread them out like a blanket and hide inside the words that belong to someone else. Nix knows full well that Dick will give him anything he has, and in the end he gives back _and I swear I will never translate myself at all_.


End file.
